Though the Raiders later showed a stout red-zone defense and managed two touchdowns, they shot themselves in the foot time after time. The fans - the ones who showed up - booed loudly. The yellow flags flew frequently. The team trudged off the field after the 26-13 loss.

It was just one more chapter for a team in crisis.

It's so hard to imagine - deep into this bleak, boring season - that a year ago, the Raiders were deadlocked with Denver for the AFC West title. Both teams finished 8-8 (along with San Diego), and Denver won the division on the basis of one botched Raiders play. Because Detroit beat the Raiders - when Rolando McClain couldn't cover Calvin Johnson - Denver won the AFC West based on record against common opponents.

Ever since then, the teams have sprinted in opposite directions. Denver improved to 10-3 Thursday and is in the AFC's elite. The Raiders dropped to 3-10 and are again irrelevant. They have done nothing in this season of massive change to signal that they are going the right way.

"I couldn't really comment on Denver's football team," said Dennis Allen, when asked about the divergent paths. "I'm not in their building, and I wasn't here last year. Our consistency isn't where we need to be. We compound mistakes at times."

A year ago, Allen was with Denver. Now, he's in Oakland. He probably could comment, though it didn't seem right to press the issue during this horrible week, when he lost his father.

Goodell was asked about the Raiders' prospects for staying in Oakland. He noted the league's funding mechanism that can provide $200 million for a stadium project and said that money would be available to the Raiders, regardless of the 49ers' head start in building a stadium. He also said that sharing the 49ers' stadium remained "an option" if the Raiders chose it. He said that because there is still no stadium solution in Los Angeles, there's no movement toward a team there.

Those rote answers won't quell the speculation that Mark Davis would like to move the team back to L.A. Just as nothing will stifle the Jon Gruden rumors that bubbled up again this week.

They are another familiar sign of desperate times. When things get bad - too often for the Raiders - the first inclination is to reach back into a better past. Gruden visited with Mark Davis and his mother, Carol, when he lit the Al Davis torch before the Saints game Nov. 18. When I talked to him the following day, Gruden had nothing but glowing things to say about how great it was to see the Davis family.

He didn't burn his bridges in Oakland. That doesn't mean he would walk back over them: He would have his choice of NFL jobs, with teams that are fully stocked and complete with modern facilities. He has already done his Raiders time. The rumor is a pipe dream.

The Raiders' problems are so dog-eared. Stadium? Los Angeles? Coach? We've paged through all these issues, for years and years.

It was an impressive reminder of, as someone used to say, the greatness of the Raiders. Of the onetime winning culture. When they produced Hall of Famers rather than simply lost to future members.

The most poignant thing said during the pregame panel came from Long, drafted the year before the Raiders moved to L.A. He spoke of being a kid coming into the Oakland locker room and joining Shell, Upshaw and Hendricks.

"Those great players made it a point of emphasis to show young players that this is how you play the game, how you compete," Long remembered. "That this is what it means to put on a Raiders helmet."

That's what missing, the leadership and knowledge of who and what the Raiders once were. That culture is almost extinct. And no one is sure if the new regime is the right one to rescue it.